The Catholic Church: A History

Wife loves this DVD course.

I wanted this for along very happy

Very interesting book and a good historical insight into the Catholic Church

This is an excellent course...and I'm not even a Catholic! Taught by an outstanding historian, this captures your attention immediately and holds your interest throughout.

Decent summary with the inevitable omissions. Very Roman Catholic with little acknowledgement of the various splits in Catholicism.

am frankly uncomfortable discussing Cook's errors, which were limited to Chapter Three, a minor amount in an otherwise excellent course. I am doing it because he is...just...wrong.Here are some of his errors: Cook says that church structure, or offices, didn't appear quickly. False. The very first documents of Christianity are Paul's letters, and Paul in 1 Philippians, circa 61 AD, mentions overseers or bishops. By 115 AD - less than a century since the crucifixion - the letters of Ignatius of Antioch make it clear there were bishops in almost all cities with Christians. The word 'catholic' meaning a universal or great church, was used by Ignatius in 115, who mentions it in a throwaway line, as if everybody already knew and acknowledged that there was a universal church. Christians passed on the tradition in schools as Paul mentions the first paid ministry was teaching, as does the Didache (Gal. 6.6, Did. 13.2).Yet Cook claims some versions of Christianity were 'radical', such as Marcion and his breakaway group, and the Gnostics, so there was no clear 'body of orthodox teaching', or a 'core of orthodoxy'.That is utterly false, the reverse of the actual evidence. The evidence of orthodoxy in Rome is proven by Cook's own example, Marcion, who began as an orthodox Christian, who was 'in communion' with the rest of the Christians, meaning he was allowed to receive the Eucharist, the sign of orthodoxy in Rome and everywhere. Then he peevishly developed his own brand of Christianity by rejecting the Old Testament, not to mention much of the New. That was when the orthodox Christians, after exhaustively trying to bring Marcion to heel, refused to let him receive the Eucharist. If orthodox beliefs were not yet in existence, why were all the orthodox churches refusing to admit Marcion and his followers?Cook states Jesus did not set up offices, not "clearly and directly". Mmm...there were clearly twelve apostles, three of them marked as being part of the inner circle, with Peter clearly the leader over all. And if these weren't offices, explain why the apostles had to vote for another member after the death of Judas. All of Greco Roman society was hierarchical, so it would be very, very odd if early Christianity alone had no hierarchy. Not to mention the early Christians came from Second Temple Judaism, which had a high priest and a sacrificial priesthood for the removal of sins, a belief in both the oral and written traditions, and gosh, funny thing, that's exactly what the great church ended up with. Clearly and directly.Although Cook mentions the Council of Jerusalem circa 49 AD he appears not to be able to connect the dots between a church council and a church. Pretty hard to have one without the other. Cook repeats Paul saying 'Peter was clearly in the wrong' without mentioning the blindingly obvious, that Peter and Paul resolved the issue. Again, proof of a great church. Also, dogma develops; it took centuries for the the dogma of the trinity to be concluded.Cook says Eusebius was incorrect when he claimed there was an actual body of orthodoxy, kept from the time of the apostles. Yet this was the argument of every other church father before Constantine. Wouldn't they have known? We read proof of this orthodoxy in 1 Clement in 95 AD, in the letters of Ignatius, 115 AD, the writings of Justin Martyr, who wrote, "The Eucharist was sent by a messenger to those who were not physically present, and with whom communion should be maintained."And Cook is simply wrong to include the small Gnostic groups as part of Christianity. If it was so hard to distinguish between Gnostics and the Christians, why was the anti Christian Celsus, who wrote against Christianity so clear on which was which? At least three times the Christian hating Celsus refers to the orthodox as the vast multitude, and as the Gnostics as tiny philosophical groups. In 'Against Heresies' Irenaeus attacked the claims of the Gnostics by pointing out the unbroken line of orthodox teachings and bishops “In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the Apostles until now, and handed in truth.”Long before the Nag Hammadi find, the various schools of Gnosticism were thought to have sprung into existence after Christianity. They were regarded as a pagan reaction to Christianity, a second-century heresy. It is now increasingly clear that this was the truth, and that there were no Gnostics until long after Christianity began. Certainly not until long after all the books of the New Testament were written.Here is one scholar on the topic: "Up to the present no decisive proof of the non-Christian origin of Gnosticism has been found, either in the New Testament or in the Nag Hammadi writings or elsewhere. No Gnostic text has been found that we can date with certainty, or even with a degree of probability, to a pre-Christian time" (Petrement, p 10 'A Separate God").Here are some good books on the subject: "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony" by Richard Bauckham, "Lord Jesus Christ" by Hurtado, "Torah in the Mouth,” "Early Text of the New Testament,” "Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition,” and “Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text.”Again, I am sorry to write this, when Cook is a fine scholar, and the rest of his lectures are simply splendid. I just felt that if you get this one idea wrong - that the church had an orthodox core which it held to always - I am afraid you could get everything else wrong.

This is a very informative course, and the apparent Catholicism of the professor adds to this course, in my opinion as a non-catholic, rather than takes away from it.There are plenty of "anti Catholic" books and resources out there, so it is nice to see a history that explains things from the point of view of the church.While not anti Catholic, the professor makes very clear the shortcomings of actual historical documents and makes it apparent that the development of Christianity and Catholicism (and even the content of the gospels) had much more to do with the societies where it developed than with actual historical events.The course is also in no way a sermon, and it does not state the religious beliefs as facts. What the professor does emphasize is what people at various times believed and what was important to them.I have recently read 8 or 9 histories of the Middle Ages in Europe and it became clear that I could not understand that time without understanding the Catholic Church, as it is just as important to the shaping of events as the places that would become England, France, or Italy. This course did a great job of filling in gaps in my understanding and presenting a concise (considering the great expanse of time covered <19 hours is concise, especially considering that decent treatments of the French Revolution or the Norman Conquest will often be much longer despite covering a time period 1/200th to 1/20th as long) history of one of the most important (like it or not) institutions of the past 2 millenia.

Our weekly study group on Christian History at our Catholic church loved this course. What an entertaining fellow Prof Cook is, and really keeps the viewer engaged. He knows his material, is passionate about it, and presents it in a non-bias historical "just the facts ma'am" way, so anyone interested in Greco Roman history, and Christian Antiquity, weather Christian or non-Christian, Catholic or protestant, will love this course. Over the course, he'll take you from the time of Christ, right up to the modern church and cover all the good with the bad.Have fun with this course, and pay special attention to all of his great ties that he wears in each lecture!